the Way, the Truth, and the Life

You were there all along, Kept tucked away under layers, Preserved in damaged splendor Without defect other than naivety, Streams of idealistic thought Observing the Unseen within the seen, Hidden all this time while an Expedition in far country to find the lost Diverted focus from the closest possible Place to look, to seek, to find: Your chest. Within your chest. All along. Clear words pinned to your chest. Make up for what you will but there is No false sign when the heart leaps, A signal to the seeker there is much to Save from taking identity back. Swirling traps deflected and distorted, Preventing required efforts to Simply go where the trail marked a Return home for the chance to leave again, Knowing the distance created was your Own doing, wandering away from Sacred practices, rehearsed back to life just Prior to finding your archived heart.

A person may lose their voice, they may lose their way, but they cannot lose themselves. They travel with them always. A funny thing happened on my way towards re:re:re-self discovery. I took a peak into this original blog of mine. With a caricature formed in my head regarding this blog (my own blog!) during an incredibly critical transitional period of my life over the past 2 years, I only took a peak at a couple blog entries now and then. Some of the absolute last ones posted on here. But no further. In the interim, for extremely specific reasons, I decided to launch an entirely different blog . It's too much to lay out here and is besides the point, but the new blog was rooted in describing how much my focus on several critical issues had changed and the need to play catch up on a radically different life I had formed. When I would think about blogging in general over the past 2 years, I of course laughed with a 'that's so 00's' sentiment. There are alread...

When your work has a face, a heart, a mind, a soul, then it is all worth doing.  After just completing a set of maps at work for a meeting of the minds, maps identifying vacant and dangerous homes surrounding select schools in the Detroit Public School system, the maps came alive. Working within the conceptual has its limits.  Maps are simply representations of the physical environment, and can be portrayed in many ways.  The hope of utilizing such data are important, one tells oneself, because it is for the children (at least in this case).  Or for the betterment of all so decisions are made with better data.  But what is this really for?  Who exactly are the ones walking home looking at abandoned buildings everyday?  Staring at dots reveal there are a lot of dots on a plain sheet of paper, minus the stories of those dodging the dots on a daily basis. Cafe Con Leche, Detroit, MI.  Elementary band performance. After finishing the maps I go...

9 Jesus also told this parable to some who were confident that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else.  10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers - or even like this tax collector.  12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.'  13 The tax collector, however, stood far off and would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am!'  14 I tell you that this man went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."  -   Luke 18:9-14  The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector.  From www.Internetmonk.com This is a parable that I find myself going back to c...

What happens when  I wait for things to happen, not much.  Nothing really happens.  But when I take what has been given me and run with it, things happen.  And this not of my doing, so that I would boast about it.  It is all given to me from God, and yet I squander much of what is going for me.  Christ is just too important to be taken advantage of.  I don't simply want His grace alone, I want to be able to run with that grace that has been given, with the peace that passes all understanding.  This is true witnessing of Christ, that what has been restored restores others.  That what has been given is shared.  Then, and only then, is someone curious as to where I got this grace from. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a rundown, inner-city store.   It is open all the time yet not many enter in.   The paint peeling away on the one side of the building, the dilapidated awning, and only a couple parking spots in the front on the street deter many passing by from checking it out.   On the inside, it is part café, part coffee shop, part book store.   Much time is spent there for those who do enter into the store.   Many relationships are deepened with conversation that goes late into the night and people come to realize who they are more and more.   Causes are taken up to paint the plumber’s store across the street, to clean up someone’s mother’s yard, to take in the drug addict on the street.   And all the more, these people come to realize who they are. But people keep passing by.   People who attend churches painted well, with covered doorways, and a sea of parking available.   And no relationships are developed. But in th...

I find myself freed from something I created on my own.  It was the entrapment from what I thought was school and the push towards that goal.  When I finished my last class, with just my masters essay to go, I went to work the next day.  And that's when it washed over me that I could do anything I wanted; start another band; join a gym; begin recreational reading; become an avid bowler.  So many choices that are now available to me all of a sudden!     As quickly as that wave of emotion came, what followed was a profound question.  What stopped me from doing all that before?  I know that I may have literally been busy, but the more I realized what was hitting me I understood that it wasn't that all those ambitious things were not available to me to do, but that instead it was that I prevented them.  And more so, I was emotionally stopped.  It was the feeling of burden, and for no more reason then that I was in a self imposed ...